Today on Soren's one month birth anniversary I have been reminiscing about his first days on this Earth.
As many of you know-nothing is planned. Things happen all of the time that are out of our control. For this reason I am not a planner. Of course, there are some things you must plan for- emergencies, vacations, holidays. But I try my best not to get my mind set on anything. This allows me to adapt easily when things get thrown from left field. The hours after Soren's birth were one of those things.
After Soren was born, I delivered the placenta as all women do after a vaginal birth. As soon as I delivered my placenta I bled a large amount, more than Constance, the midwife, was okay with. I was given a dose of placenta into my right thigh and Constance gave me 4 misoprostol suppositories. Both of these medications are used in labor induction and cause the uterus to contract. They immediately worked and my blood loss slowed. The average blood loss for a vaginal birth is around 500cc, I lost 800cc.
Being a worrier, I immediately became very nervous. I asked Constance multiple times if she was concerned, and she responded that if she was concerned she would have me transferred to the hospital and at that point she wasn't going to do so. After a while I was able to calm down and focused on enjoying my first moments with Soren. We laid in bed, had visitors and I ate a meal (my first in 24 hours).
On average women leave the Birth House with their babies three hours after delivery, as soon as they can urinate. After the first few blood pressure and pulse checks we quickly learned that we would not be so fortunate. My pulse was very high so the midwife's assistant hooked me up to an IV and pushed me to down coconut oil. Some women have difficulty urinating after birth- I could not stop going! I had so much fluid in my body I could barely rest without having to go pee, which was a good thing. However my pulse continued to stay high. This is when the midwife had our few visitors leave and told us that we needed to sleep-pronto. Let me tell you- sleeping is that last thing you wanna do when you have a fresh little newborn to love. So Constance took Soren for his tests and we tried to rest.
After a couple hours, around 10 o'clock, we woke up and started moving around again. My pulse was finally lowered to a place where Constance felt like I would be okay to go home. She was not, however, okay with Soren going home. While we were sleeping they found that he continued to have rapid breathing. Rapid breathing is something that all infants have, especially right after birth, but usually their respiratory rate is around 40-60 because they have rapid breathing and then stop breathing for a longer-than-seems-okay amount of time. This is why so many new parents get scared that their baby isn't breathing, because they don't for long spouts.
Soren's breathing was not slowing down and although this is normal in the hours after birth- it had been 7 hours since he came into the world and that was too long. He could have a lung infection. They told us that they were going to take us to the hospital and have Soren admitted to the Special Care Nursery. This was not the NICU and we would be able to stay with him as long as he was there. I was so devastated- we had done everything to stay out of the hospital, but it ended up that we needed to have our son admitted there on his first day of life.
Jacob and I agreed that, of course, we wanted to make sure that Soren did not have a lung infection so we loaded up the care with all of our things and headed to the hospital.
We arrived at 12AM. The hospital was dead quiet. They took Soren from my arms and placed him in one of those awful plastic hospital bassinets. The nurses took a chest x-ray, they ran a CBC, they took his blood pressure - from each arm and leg. I was running on adrenaline at this point, after barely having an hour of rest in the past 36 hours, so I stayed up and chatted with Constance while the nurses did their thing. Soren cried, he was unhappy.
Jacob was exhausted and he was upset that Soren had to get all the tests done. His anger at the situation made my feelings swell up. I was trying to stay strong, as mothers are supposed to do, but as we watched him get poked and prodded and squeezed it was hard to keep the tears from welling up in my eyes. My perfect, new baby, who should be spending all of first day curled up on his mother's chest, was laying on a cold table being man handled by a nurse. How could I not be angry?
After he was done we were shown our "room." It was the size of a closet with only a curtain to block us from the nurse's station and the rest of the "rooms." The bed was a chair that reclined and pulled out into less than a twin bed. Every so often we would hear a lonely baby crying. Most of the babies were alone because their mothers were still upstairs in their hospital rooms recovering from birth. I was so thankful to be able to be with Soren and not have to leave him or be admitted myself.
Soren was hooked up to a machine by three wires. I signed a waiver saying that I was going to be violating hospital rules by having my baby sleeping with me in the "bed."
It was rough.
We barely slept that night. At 3AM the pediatrician came in to tell us the results of his CBC. His white blood cell count was 21%, where it should have been 5%. He could have a blood infection, or the barely-there mist on the chest x-rays could be a lung infection. She said it would be irresponsible of her to ignore the results and that we would need to do a blood culture and start him on antibiotics. This was honestly the hardest thing for us. Sitting here writing this I am still crying about having my 1-day old baby put on antibiotics. Not because he had to have an IV, or because he had to have another heel poke, but because Jacob and I are very anti- antibiotic unless absolutely necessary and we didn't know if it was necessary. The antibiotics he would be on would be IN CASE he had an infection, not because he did.
The blood culture would take 36 hours to get results. 36 hours. When we first showed up at the hospital we were told they would probably monitor until morning and if he was still eating okay and acting normally than we would go home. Now we learned we would be there for 36 hours more. Soren's first DAYS would be spend in the hospital- not just his first hours.
I cried after that. I cried because they were taking my baby away again and because I felt like it was something that I did that he could possibly have the infection. We both agreed that we did not want to not do the antibiotics because obviously if he did have an infection he needed them. But we were extremely upset and exhausted and uncomfortable. 12 hours earlier we thought we would be home and in our bed with our baby at this point.
But we got over it, and through it. The next morning we woke up with our baby in our arms and over the wires and beeps we realized that we were okay. We thought about all the other babies there, that definitely did have infections- or worse. We thought about all the parents that were unable to be with their babies. The moms upstairs spending their first night of motherhood alone- no baby in their arms, no baby on their breast. I did have my baby-right there on my chest.
The next day we were moved to an actual room, with a bed that we could both sleep in and a real door. It even had a sink, and a mirror and a TV! We felt like were in a hotel. Soren continued to get antibiotics every 12 hours and we continued to meet new nurses and new pediatricians who told us the same things. He was doing well, his breathing was still high, there was still no growth on the blood culture.
And on Sunday we went home. It turned out that he never had an infection in the first place. His high white blood cell count was just because and his rapid breathing slowed down. He was a totally healthy, happy little boy and we were finally able to take him home!
Although it was hard to be in the hospital and totally, completely not what we planned, we survived. Soren survived. And you know what? He won't remember the pokes and prods and the wires and beeps. He won't remember the cold hospital smell or the stiff hospital sheets. But he will know that his mama and papa did what needed to be done to make sure that he was healthy.
